I'll eat up all your crackers and your licorice

100 Words about Baseball

Why I Love Baseball

There is no clock
90 feet between bases is genius
There are secret signs
Hanging curveballs are sexy
Numbers are magic: 755, 56, 7, 61, 1.12
Tinker to Evers to Chance
Ivy at Wrigley
The Green Monster
The suicide squeeze
Cracker Jack
Walt Whitman liked it
Jackie Robinson and Pee-Wee Reese
It just feels American
The seventh-inning stretch
Superstition
Guys in tight pants
Bull Durham
Centerfield
There’s no crying in baseball
Cooperstown
A great play at the plate
Chatter
Pepper
High socks
Tradition
Spring training
Keeping score
The rubber game
The infield fly rule
162 chances

Become a Fan

Film

I am not a cook. When I do cook, I do it moderately well. I rarely attempt anything terribly complicated because I'd rather spend my time doing other things. But the things I do prepare are generally satisfying and based seldom on recipes but more often on old advice from my father, notes jotted in a spiral notebook while talking to my mother, or just experimenting.

Tonight, Joe and I watched Julie & Julia and maybe it's as much the turn of the calendar as it is the content of the movie, but I am feeling inspired. With a couple of clicks mid-way through the movie, I ordered Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the cookbook for "the servantless American cook" that made Julia Child a household name, made French cooking accessible to Americans, and made tonight's movie possible.

It isn't just the movie, though. It's this:

Inside that Dutch oven is perhaps the most delicious food I've ever had in my entire life. It was my first night in Paris and, exhausted after a full day at Disneyland Paris and walking the Champs Elysees after my train ride into the city, I checked into the Hotel Lutetia. All I wanted to do was order room service and stare from my balcony at my amazing view. (Do click as this was one of those moments Americans with travel aspirations dream of. I was not expecting it and unabashedly jumped up and down and clapped when the hotel night manager showed me the view as he introduced me to my room.)

But I digress (and with a view like that, it's easy to digress). After being informed that the room service was provided by the hotel's brasserie, I selected the poulet fermier de Challans rôti à l'ail et au thym, pomme purée du Lutetia. Or, chicken roasted with garlic and thyme with mashed potatoes. For the moment I will skip over that rond de chèvre, although just looking at it makes me want to buy a ticket to Paris, and get to the actual point. Among those who frequently dine out with me, I am known as something of a mashed potato connoisseur. So when I saw pomme purée du Lutetia on the menu, there was no question of what to order. Being a somewhat picky eater in a foreign country, I'll admit I was a bit nervous about what I would receive. But there was no need--what I received was a revelation: never did I dream that mashed potatoes could be so amazing. The small chicken, perhaps the size of a Cornish hen, rested in the oven on a bed of mashed potatoes with whole cloves of garlic and sprigs of rosemary. The chicken itself was astonishing on its own - tender and juicy beyond any I'd experienced. The jus (can poultry have a jus? "Drippings" seems too crude for something that tasted so divine) only enhanced the flavor of the potatoes. I would have licked the oven clean if it weren't for the fact that it was smaller than my face. They were THAT good.

Two nights later I dined in the Brasserie du Lutetia, "one of the Left Bank’s most famous culinary institutions" and had the same meal. You know all that stuff about the second pressing of the grape and all? Not the case here - it was every bit as wonderful the second time around. I think I could eat that meal every day for the rest of my days here on earth and be happy. Of course, that would likely reduce my days here on earth significantly. C'est la vie. Or should I say, la mort?

It is the memory of those meals that made the movie more enjoyable and prompted me to order the cookbook. I do not intend to cook every recipe in the book, ever, let alone in one year. But I do intend to try a few things. The book will be here on Tuesday and I have it on good authority that page 520 will be my first venture.

One more thing...did you know Julia Child is credited with introducing to America the idea of adding garlic to mashed potatoes? I nominate her to be Patron Saint of Mashed Potatoes.

Today at work we watched a movie, but not just any movie. This was a documentary created by a long-time friend of the firm. And it wasn't just any documentary to him. To him, it represents a life dream come to fruition. The film is The Singing Revolution and it chronicles how the people of Estonia endured decades of occupation and oppression and overcame what seemed like unbeatable odds to achieve freedom. This freedom wasn't won on a battlefield; it wasn't won through bloodshed. Instead, it was achieved through determination, through courage and through patience. It is a revolution that is best remembered not for arms raised in violence, but for voices raised in song.

Growing up, the Soviet Union seemed invincible, cold and cruel, but it was also far away. It couldn't touch me, or so I thought. (And it turned out I was right.) I remember sitting on the couch on my birthday, watching the Berlin Wall come down. I remember the uneasy feeling I had watching Gorbachev, wondering if he was serious about the reforms he proposed, wondering if he would be remembered as a hero or a failure. And I remember news reports about the Baltic States. I knew where they were on the map--three tiny divisions of land tucked away under the hulking shoulder of the USSR. They were so often referred to as the Baltic States that I doubt I ever gave a thought to the fact that they were once three nations, three peoples. To me, they were all the same--distant, foreign and in struggle.

Watching the movie, I expected to see a story about freedom, a tiny David felling the Communist Goliath. But what I didn't expect was just how much the revolution is a story of culture. Concentration camps, gulags, military rule and the savages of war could not exterminate the things which made people Estonian, and it is their very culture, their singing tradition, that united them and provided them with the opportunity to oppose and eventually throw off Soviet rule. Without bloodshed.

At 2:28 a.m., most normal, reasonable people are sleeping. Being neither reasonable nor normal, I am watching "Barefoot in the Park." I just got this movie on DVD to replace my VHS copy. I adore this movie -- Jane Fonda and Robert Redford are delightful together and I'm hard pressed to say which one is better looking. The opening bit when they honeymoon at The Plaza is so cute and (you knew I was going to get to this) Jane Fonda's clothes are terrific. It's the kind of movie that makes me want to put on an extra coat of mascara and then kiss for a couple of days.

Upon arriving at The Plaza...Corie: Paul, if the honeymoon doesn't work out, let's not get divorced. Let's kill each other. Paul: Let's have one of the maids do it. I hear the service here is wonderful.